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Panzerballett

Panzerballett of Germany has just released a new album, Tank Goodness. The band’s fourth release boasts guest appearances featuring, among others, Randy Brecker,and Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh. The music of Panzerballett has been designed to function as a perfect workout to highly develop, expand, and reinforce the connections between the brain and each muscle used for head banging. Some have reported head shaking as an early side-effect that mostly, after prolonged exposure, develops into smiling and sometimes even rapturous laughter.

Jan Zehrfeld, the band’s mastermind, studied jazz guitar in Los Angeles, Graz, Helsinki, and Munich. He has performed with DOLDINGER’S PASSPORT, the HILLIARD ENSEMBLE and Peter Herbolzheimer‘s GERMAN NATIONAL YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA. His hard ‘n‘ heady compositions are an innovative fusion of jazz, funk, and metal. Sophisticatedly interlocked funk grooves are combined with heavy polyrhythmic riffs as well as jazz improvisation.

Known for their energy, chops and humor, PANZERBALLETT has performed over 200 shows, including concerts with the CHICK COREA & JOHN MCLAUGHLIN FIVE PEACE BAND, KENNY GARRETT, BILL FRISELL, MACALPINE/SHEEHAN/DONATI and MATTIAS “IA” EKLUNDH. German newspaper Die Welt has described them as “faster than Metallica, more powerful than Motörhead, and funnier than Rammstein.”

“Panzerballett is the first band I’ve heard that really leads Music into the 21st Century!” – Randy Brecker

“Very well done. Normally, I don’t like people re-arranging my father’s music but this was a pleasant surprise.” – Dweezil Zappa

“What you are doing is truly innovative and refreshing, not to say ingenious.” – Mattias IA Eklundh, Freak Kitchen

Consider the Source

NYC trio Consider the Source defy easy description. If intergalactic beings of pure energy, after initiation into an order of whirling dervishes, built some kind of pan-dimensional booty-shaking engine, powered by psychedelics and abstract math, it’d probably just sound like a CTS tribute band. Drawing from progressive rock, fusion and jazz, with alien sounds soaked in Indian and Middle Eastern styles, CTS blends disparate parts into a striking, utterly original whole. Dubbed “Sci-Fi Middle Eastern Fusion”, the band’s music strikes a rare balance between cerebral and emotional, intellectual and primal. A relentless touring schedule has won the band a fervent following from California to Israel, with fans ranging from jam-band hippies and jazz cats to corpse-painted headbangers and prog geeks.

Formed in 2004, Consider the Source features Gabriel Marin on fretless double-neck guitar, bassist John Ferrara, and drummer/percussionist Jeff Mann. Called “the guiding light for his generation of six-stringers”, Marin channels the mystical fury of McLaughlin and Coltrane into wailing melodies, kaleidoscopic soundscapes and boneshaking riffs. With a background in classical musics both Eurpoean and Indian, and an instinct for avant-jazz and destructive metal, Marin’s hypnotic fusion of styles is ever unpredictable. Ferrara’s propulsive, percussive attack, equally suited to simple grooves and impossible chords, can ground the music or launch it into space. His madcap gumbo of slap bass, Indian rhythms, earthy minimalism and complex tapping constantly pushes into strange new worlds, whilst still dropping thick booty-clap beats. Underneath them lies Mann’s rolling thunder; dense rhythmic architecture built from pure swagger and bounce. Half double-bass prog-metal, half crackle-pop Buddy Rich swing, with African and Balkan swirls, Mann’s muscular, freewheeling polyrhythms are the engine fuel for Consider’s multiversal mischief. Even when not improvising, Consider’s music is always a conversation, a roiling stew of dynamic interplay. Each member of Consider the Source alternately leads and follows, spars and assists; in any single song, alliances are made and broken, bargains struck and divorces finalized.

Touring from coast to coast, as well as Europe and the Middle East, has not only earned the band thousands of fans, but has allowed them to perform with wide variety of well-known artists, including Victor Wooten, Wayne Krantz, King Crimson Projekt, Kris Myers (Umphrey’s McGee), Wyclef Jean, Andy Statman, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Dumpstaphunk, Keller Williams, George Porter, Jr., Jeff Sipe, Panzerballet (Germany), Eatliz (Israel), Freak Kitchen (Sweden), Morglbl (France), and many others. They have performed at numerous festivals and events, including Catskill Chill, The Big Up, Burning Man, Sun Seekers Ball (Canada), Mid-Summer Meltdown, Rootwire, the NYC Fretless Guitar Festival, and the NYC Gypsy Festival. The band’s newest album, “F**k It! We’ll Do It Live” is available from considerthesource-nyc.bandcamp.com.